Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

arrest, almost solitary confinement. She didn’t speak to me for that entire month. Thank goodness I had school, or I would have lost my mind.

“At the end of the month, she informed me I would be attending a boarding school for the last two years of high school and if I told anyone there about my gift, I would be cut off from the family, no questions asked. The family would never help me again.”

I waited, shocked, as she blew across the top of the coffee and took a sip. How could a mother say that to a fifteen-year-old?

“What did you do?”

“You know the rest, Clara.” She looked at me, perhaps because some part of what she was about to say was the lie. “I got pregnant with you, and that botched my mother’s plans. You can imagine the scandal, but I finished high school—the GED, almost a sin in this town—and your father and I got married.”

I couldn’t tell which part was untrue.

“I adored you from the moment you were born, Clara. But you were a girl, and I knew you would inherit the gift, like all the other women in the family.

“Since it had led to such pain for me, I tried to train you out of it. Obviously, I failed, and, obviously, I hurt you in the process. I’m truly sorry for that. I believed not having the gift would be the greater good. After your father died, I changed my mind, but by then, I’d already lost you.” She fell silent.

She cared that she’d lost me? Pain slit into my gut and made me nauseous. “What’s the cottage?”

“Hugh brought me back to my intuition, encouraged me to find a ‘safe’ space to practice. Loretta suggested I fix up that little house. It’s always been a very quiet arrangement.”

“Hugh knew about your intuition, too?”

She nodded.

“Could that be why he was murdered?”

She looked startled. “Why would anyone care about Hugh’s secrets? He’d taken an oath not to share them.”

“And if, for some reason, he suddenly was willing to break his oath?”

“Are you asking me if I murdered Hugh?”

“It’s a motive.”

She picked up the cup, twisted it ninety degrees, put it down again. Nudged it with her finger. “Everyone knew anyway—Mary Ellen made certain of that.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t kill him. Do you really think I could?” That look of sadness re-inhabited her face.

“No,” I said slowly. “Do you know who did it, like you claimed at his memorial service?”

She shook her head. “I’d love to pin it on that despicable Winters clan, but I can’t see any connection between them and Hugh.”

I opened my mouth to ask her why she hated them so much, when the phone rang. My mother pushed herself up from the table with a frown. I glanced at the clock. It was five minutes past three. Her hand remained ­suspended over the receiver for two rings before she picked it up and greeted the caller with apprehension.

She listened a moment, said, “I understand. We’ll be right there.” She turned, her face suddenly drawn in on itself. “Hetty’s been murdered.”

We arrived at the stable at three-thirty on the longest, darkest night of the year. Only one or two stars glimmered between the sheets of cloud that covered the sky. “She was murdered here?” I asked as we pulled in.

“She was murdered near her farm. We’re here for Loretta. I didn’t want to leave her and Ernie alone tonight.”

“Oh.” I’d figured we were going to the murder scene, pictured a body bag with Chief DuPont supervising the action. Then, I could confess that I hadn’t told Hetty about my vision, hadn’t warned her to be careful. There, I could get absolution for my guilt. Instead, that guilt would further cloud my intuition, the only thing that might help.

An outside light shone by the front door. A dim glow emanated from the curtained window to its right. Ernie opened the door and waved us into the front room where Loretta sat, red-eyed and tense on a bright floral couch. She leapt up and ran to my mother. “Oh, Constance,” she sobbed. Mother wrapped her arms firmly around Loretta and led her back to the couch, where she crumpled. Ernie suggested he and I make coffee in the kitchen.

“I’m so sorry.” I stood near the sink, feeling useless.

He gave me an appraising look. “Thank you, Clara.” His long, thin fingers swung open the coffeemaker’s basket. “I know there was no love lost between the two of you.”

“We tried to set that right tonight, Ernie.” I breathed a prayer of thanks to Bailey. “It was a long time ago.”

“I got the time, if you want to tell me the story.”

So I told him about Hetty, only editing out my final vision of a man’s arm across Hetty’s throat. He listened, leaning against the counter.

Ernie reminded me of my father: gentle and kind, but no free pass either. He stood about six-foot-one, with broad shoulders and dark brown hair that, even in his early sixties, was just now thatching itself with silver. He wore loose jeans and a flannel shirt with the tails out. Thick wooly slippers kept his sockless feet warm on the tiled kitchen floor. A tiny diamond stud shot a spark from one ear.

When I finished, he said, “Something wasn’t right with her recently. I don’t know what, and she didn’t confide in me. She and Loretta had been distant for several months. Maybe when the police are done with her farm, we’ll find some answers.” He shook his head. “She was a strange girl, even Loretta knew that. She never recovered from losing her dad.” He saw my face. “Hetty didn’t know how to be herself. She was too busy trying to impress someone, anyone, all the time, but she wasn’t impressive, at least not in the way she wanted to be. I’ve never seen anyone with such an intuitive grasp of what those sheep or her farmland needed, but